http://denegro.com/2008/08/turning-off-gmails-vacation-responder-for-mailing-lists/

I quoute myself here for the lazy ones:

“what about having a checkbox right to the contact so you can tag a contact as a “mailing list” so Google automatically knows they are and skip sending them holiday messages?”

I agree with what you’re saying, but you’re still obsessed.

I’ve always thought it was foolish that people sometimes put their mobile number (or the phone number or e-mail address) of their colleague into Out-of-office autoresponders, seeing as how these can get sent out to all and sundry, not just internal staff.

I wouldn’t worry about that too much, most auto-responders will only send an auto-response once per address (sometimes that only lasts for an extended period i.e. it won’t auto-respond more than once in 24 hours).

I’m torn though, half of me wants rid of them – they’re annoying. But at the same time, if it’s someone you *really* want to hear back from, it can be nice to know that they’re not responding because they’re away, and not ignoring you. But that happens so rarely, it’s not worth worrying about.

Wow, I just talked myself round … down with the auto-responders!